Certain functionaries saw fit to forward to the king, together with a covering letter,
correspondence they had received themselves. This is an example from La’um:^41
‘Behold, I have put under seal the tablet of Yasˇub-El which he had brought to me,
relating to the inhabitants, and which I have just had sent to my lord. May my lord
take note of it (lit. “hear it”).’
This was done more particularly when the governor of a province received a letter
from a foreign king (Durand 1991 : 28 – 29 ). He would take note of the letter and
then send it on to the king, having placed it in an envelope under his own seal.
A letter from Zakira-Hammu, governor of Qat.t.unan, is a good example. Having
reproduced the content of a letter he had received from Qarni-Lim, king of Andarig,
he adds:^42 ‘I have just sent the messenger of Qarni-Lim to my lord. Furthermore,
I have sealed the tablet from Qarni-Lim that came to me, and I have had it taken to
my lord.’
In a case like this, the tablet would have travelled from Andarig to Qat.t.unan under
the seal of its sender, Qarni-Lim; then from Qat.t.unan to Mari, under the seal of its
addressee, Zakira-Hammu, who forwarded the letter to a third person, in this case
the king of Mari, together with a covering letter.
Sometimes the original was retained and its contents copied in whole or in part:^43
a substantial proportion of the correspondence that has not come down to us directly
may thus be reconstituted, at least in part. The most extraordinary case I know
of is represented by FMII 116. Turum-natki, king of Apum, sent a letter to Zimri-
Lim. The latter wrote to Sumu-hadu, attaching to his own letter the letter from Turum-
natki. Writing to the Benjaminites, Sumu-hadu quoted in his letter what Turum-natki
had said. And finally, Sumu-hadu reported to Zimri-Lim on his mission in a letter
in which he copied the letter he sent to the Benjaminites. The only letter we have
is this last, but through it we know of three others.
Written letters and oral messagesIn certain cases, to counter the risk of interception, messages were not set down in
writing. Zimri-Lim’s sister, the princess Atrakatum, revealed to her brother the exist-
ence of a plot at the court of her husband Sumu-dabi, the Benjaminite king of Samanum,
which she hoped to recount in detail at a meeting with Zimri-Lim in person:^44
Another thing: the Bedouin, the sheikh whom my lord once sent to Sumu-dabi
and to whom he (the latter) had accorded a ration of textiles, one day, in the
middle of the night, came here and told all sorts of things to Sumu-dabi. When
I have a meeting with my lord, I will repeat to him all the man’s words. If that
should not happen and the affair is urgent, he should write to me what should
be done; I will have written on a tablet the details of what this man said, and I
will have it taken to my lord.The notion that certain things cannot be set down in writing occurs repeatedly.
Samsi-Addu thus writes to Yasmah-Addu:^45
On the subject of what Samsi-Dagan told you, this is what you wrote to me: ‘It
is not appropriate to write such things on a tablet.’ Why is this? Do it and send— Letters in the Amorite world —